As disclosed for example in the following patents, packaging for photosensitive material are well known, and specific embodiments-thereof have been provided for solving various material packaging problems, or for meeting various materials packaging objectives.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,133,171 end disks or flanges are disclosed having dimensions larger than the dimensions of the roll. These large flanges, while satisfactory for solving the problem addressed in the patent, could complicate dispensing from some cassettes and prevent the film from being rewound back into the cassettes.
Other light-tight packaging, such as those described in Research Disclosure 22932, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,911,299, 4,505,387, 4,148,395, and 4,733,777 require components to be torn to access product in the packaging, thereby producing dust and dirt. Moreover, these prior art packages are also difficult to manufacture because of the number of components and complicated sealing operations.
There also exist several packages, such those described in, for instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 0,191,417, 4,911,299, and 5,222,601, that disclose aspiral wrapping technique to cover the ends of the roll. The resultant packaging adds multiple thicknesses of material to the ends of the roll and to the roll core thereby preventing its use in many types of processing equipment. Furthermore, these packages have the additional shortcoming of requiring tearing of components to access the contents, as well as complicated manufacturability.
Despite the various improvements represented by the above examples; an almost universal objective to be accomplished is to completely block the ingress of light to the physically protected roll while not making the roll incompatible with various types of processing equipment.